October 23, 2008

"Now is not the time to experiment with socialism," AK Gov. Sarah Palin, suddenly become an expert in economics and political science, lectured a gathering of Pennsylvanians today.

A few hours earlier, Alan Greenspan, who is presumably as expert in economics as they do come, described to a House committee his recent experiments with capitalism:

Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder's equity — myself especially — are in a state of shocked disbelief.

"This crisis," he added, "has turned out to be much broader than anything I could have imagined."

What Greenspan means is that he underestimated base human greed and trusted billionaire bankers to be responsible to the polity in the deliberate absence of fair and meaningful regulation and oversight by the people's elected representatives.

One of the effects of Greenspan's experiments in capitalism is that the federal government was forced to partially nationalize those same banks, an experiment in socialism that Palin's running mate, Senator John McCain, championed and supported.

McCain obviously thought it was time for an experiment in socialism.

And if it works, and if the investment is returned and pays dividends to the investors, remember how both McCain and Palin made the experiment into a dirty word and one of the accusatory centerpieces of their failing campaign, the campaign that McCain temporarily "suspended" to forward an experiment in socialism.

Conservative Republicans continue to warn ominously against the socialization of health care and fret over the very well-off paying a couple of extra points in income taxes while the federal government continues with its nationalization of the mortgage lending and insurance industries, about which they are largely silent.